


Numb Talking

by Lunaraen



Category: MCSM, Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: Forgiveness, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 04:53:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: Jesse just feels so...So...So something. She just doesn't know what, not really, feels numb and burning. Crushed by everyone's expectations. Doesn't want to think about it.Turns out Ivor's in a similar boat.





	Numb Talking

It should hurt.

A distant part of Jesse is very certain it does.

For the most part, though? She's numb. Everything lasts too long and yet each moment blends into the next in a twisted blur, something in her chest stinging, sharp and painful, while she feels nothing, her entire body cold and limp. She walks, she smiles, she gives pep talks, and her lips strain with every motion, her legs aching with every step.

(Jesse's so tired.

Maybe sleeping would help, but there are too many people and there’s too much to do and she can sleep later, not now, any time but now even if _now won't end_ , "later" never quite coming.)

She wants to go to bed, collapse behind some rock or tree, and wake up back home, in her tree house with Reuben. She wants, above all else, to wake up in bed with him at her feet, rather than rocks digging into her back and Reuben haunting every other thought.

It's just not possible.

Admittedly, Jesse's more and more tempted by the idea of just falling asleep and never waking up.

But that's not a whole lot more possible. Not when her friends need her, when countless strangers are looking to her for guidance and confidence she doesn't have.

That's part of why she's where she is now, stumbling more than walking, trudging not into the darkness but away from the main part of their camp. Jesse's not looking to fight anything, sword at her side just in case anyway, and stays within the dispersed ring of hundreds of torches they have spanning so many meters in every direction. She just wants to be somewhere a little less blindingly bright, somewhere where's she's not so closely surrounded by exhausted and sleeping people who deserve every bit of their rest.

An equally big part may have to do with how she can smell coffee, a desperate and curious part of her clinging to that. If she can't sleep forever, well, the dramatic opposite is that she won't sleep at all, and coffee helps with chasing away the sleep and nightmares.

Jesse pauses, freezing with one foot midair, as one of the people sleeping on the ground twitches, their sleeping bag pulled up enough to cover their head.

It's not until they settle again that she finishes stepping over them, shoulders relaxing as she exits one of the most outer throngs of sleeping people and keeps quietly walking, doing the same silent march through whats little more than a field of torches and supplies abandoned for the night.

Step, step, pray there's not a twig to snap under a boot in her next step, keep stepping.

(This would, in hindsight, be easier without her armor, but taking it off would be disrespectful to Ellegaard and feels too final and vulnerable an act. They're safer now, but they're not done yet.

Every step, one and then two, a little more hesitant but no less routine, feels as much like its own challenge, its own risk, now as when its broad daylight.

She hears monsters that aren't there and screams people are no longer making. She feels almost ready to draw her sword on the smallest of shadows, and certainly feels ridiculous about it all. It's nearly over, and the hardest part, the hardest actual battle, is over. She doesn't have the right to jump at monsters that aren't there, like some traumatized adventurer or amazing hero.

That's the sort of trauma that happens to people who have survived incredible things, and while Jesse's plenty traumatized, she's no hero. Now's not the time to start acting like it.)

Jesse's not actually planning on disturbing whoever else is up and brewing coffee in the middle of the night, but she's curious all the same. The smell is stronger away from the heart of the hundreds of sleeping people, and if someone wants their privacy, she can respect that. But if someone else is having trouble, they also deserve a shoulder to lean on.

It's the most Jesse can do right now, unable to return to building without making too much noise or doing something wrong when it's better laid out in stored away plans.

Still, all plans of comfort turn to dust and ash, uncomfortably stuck in her throat when she sidesteps a particularly large pile of equipment to find Ivor on the other side, legs crossed as he sits by a makeshift fire. The kettle's no longer boiling, a lazy, never-ending plume of steam and the smell of coffee still slowly wafting off of it from where it's set beside him.

The silence is not pleasant.

Really, it's stifling and plain awkward, more awkward than she was already preparing for. They aren't just two people who deserve their rest and are up far too late; they're two people who've been part of this disaster since the beginning, albeit starting on different sides.

Funny that they should be two of the people to see the entire thing through.

Jesse doesn't think they've really spoken since the battle, even as Ivor's diligently worked alongside the rest of them to provide healing potions and whatever other aid he can brew up.

Ivor shifts without a word, moving to the side and patting the grass beside him. It's a small invitation, as unexpected as it is silent, but Jesse takes it, settling where he sat not a moment ago. It's better than having to stare at each other from across the fire, but the discomfort doesn't exactly vanish with the two of them sitting side by side.

Her eyes are stinging and her attempt at a greeting isn't almost anything, a choked sound lodged in her throat that doesn't manage to make it to words.

Ivor, in turn, forgoes a greeting of his own.

Instead, he cuts painfully close to everything Jesse was planning to never talk about.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, in grieving." Maybe it's written over her face now, maybe it's been written all over her since they started traveling and rebuilding. "It always hurts to lose someone."

And there's a wistful quality to his voice, one that nearly everyone seems to have, that tired, hollow look in his eyes that Jesse’s seen over and over in so many people lately, eyes with dark, nearly purple circles under them, and she's speaking before she really knows it.

"I'm sorry for your-" No, it's wrong, that's wrong, it's too mechanical (she's said it too many times to too many people in the past few days but something like that should never ever sound routine) and it's the last thing she has the right to say. Jesse's mouth closes fast enough she nearly bites her tongue, back rigid and her nails digging into some part of her skin, past the gloves into her hands (her palms? They're still too sore from building to tell, too numb from everything else).

 _I'm sorry for your loss_.

People have lost homes, been separated from friends, lost livestock and pets, had precious mementos ripped from them and exploded into nothing. Loss is everywhere. Even the people insisting they've lost nothing have had something or another ripped from them; she doesn't think one person's really kept their peace of mind.

There's been a lot of mourning, a lot of moving forward, and a lot of condolences. That won't work here, now, at this time with Ivor.

Apologizing for his loss would be distancing herself from it, acting like Ellegaard's death wasn't directly Jesse's fault. Begging for forgiveness is more appropriate. A million other apologies spring to mind, scramble their way onto her tongue as her body stays too stiff, and Ivor manages to beat every single one.

"And I'm sorry for yours." Jesse feels something warm, something akin to rage or pain, spark at that, and she smothers it before it can become anything. Ivor's voice hitches as he tries to continue, and she thinks he's expecting that warmth, expecting her to lash out at him with it. "I-"

He swallows, and Jesse waits.

"I regret so many things. I could spend an eternity lamenting so much of what I've done, what I've said, the things I never acted on but should have. All the things I never should have considered but did." His voice is gentle, still, but his hand is by far steadier as he picks up a mug Jesse didn't notice and the kettle, motions smooth in a way his words aren't as he begins to pour. "And yet, I have never regretted anything more than stealing that blasted block, or using it to make that abomination. I can't give back what I took, Jesse. If I could, I would."

Ivor presses the mug into Jesse's hands, the coffee swirling without spilling and just as steamy as the kettle, and it takes her several moments too long to realize the drink's for her.

"I know."

His voice turns the sharpest she's heard in-days? weeks?-a while, his scowl as stern and nearly as bitter as his words.

"Then stop apologizing like you had anything to do with it- with _her_ dying. With the world being turned on its head. With losing Reuben." Ivor pauses, pinching at the bridge of his nose with fingers thin enough to almost be skeletal, and the venom eases away as quickly as it came. "I killed one of the brightest, most creative, inspiring people to have ever spawned. She was one of my best friends, once, and I ended up bringing about her doom. I killed Ellegaard. Just as recklessly and unintentionally, I killed Reuben. You lost one of your best friends."

It’s relieving in a way it shouldn’t be to have it addressed as it is.

Reuben might have been a pig, but he was never _just_ a pig to her. He was the best pet anybody could ask for, and to hear Ivor talk about him that way makes her choke up for different reasons.

"Maybe you should stop apologizing like you had anything to do with it." There's a ghost of a smile from Ivor at the echo, and Jesse counts it a success even as her own weak smile crashes and burns. "You didn't sneak Reuben aboard with me, or try and have him land anywhere but the lake. I should have noticed. You didn't fail to grab him, didn't take Ellegaard's armor."

"But I uprooted your life, didn't I? All our lives? Shook the very foundation of what you knew, yes, but also what you had? Your home? Your friends?" He looks away. "Petra's ridiculously fortunate to not have any lasting nerve damage."

Jesse hears the unspoken insinuation: _they're not sure she doesn't_. Petra doesn't seem to, and that's enough for Jesse now, but it's a worrying thought.

She looks up at the moon, as bright and speckled as ever, and she wonders why it gets to stay the same. How it dares be the same moon now, glowing as much in their darkest moments as it did when they were happy, when Jesse's biggest adventures involved forest escapades and building competitions.

There are better sources to be bitter at than the moon, and while she doesn't find Ivor guilty the way he apparently does, Jesse knows she herself makes a plenty fair target. Even still, she didn't act without reason, just like Ivor didn't.

"...none of this would have even happened if Soren hadn't lied about the Ender Dragon."

Jesse doesn't really know what kind of response to expect, but Ivor's chuckle, worn and weary and so close to being a bark of a laugh, isn't it.

"It would be easy, to blame him. He isn't exactly here to defend himself." In Jesse's eyes, there are a lot of other reasons for why it's easy to blame Soren, but Ivor's the last person she needs to explain that to. "I've spent a good deal of my life blaming him for things. Things he played a hand in, certainly, but not things he could entirely control. How different would it be, I wonder, if just one of them had sided with me. How different would things be if I'd never objected at all? How different if any of us had noticed him taking the command block along?"

If anyone has answers, it isn't Jesse.

Ivor doesn't seem to know much better himself.

"I thought he was being clever, however vile and manipulative the cheating itself was. Of course he'd never intended to let us do our part. Of course he'd want to orchestrate the entire thing just to his liking, with everyone safe and used like pawns." Teeth are the first to show as his lips twist into a snarl and the first to be hidden as Ivor's expression softens. "Of course he'd want everyone safe. That was something Soren would never negotiate on. However wretched a light I paint him in, he deserves credit for that. He'd never let Ellegaard die, not if he had any say in it, never let anyone get so close to death."

Not himself, certainly.

"He didn't care enough about us being in danger when it meant saving his own skin."

"Fair enough. He's a coward." Intended to be funny or not, it's straightforward enough to startle a small laugh out of Jesse. "He recognized the risks and decided they were too much. But he's not the master manipulator I've seen him as for so long. He's flawed; human. Who wasn't scared, then? I'm hardly any better; I abandoned you in the nether, and brought this entire mess down upon us to begin with."

By Ivor bringing it back to them, trying to center it on him, Jesse's reminded of how this disaster in particular is still her fault. Ivor had a fail-safe, after all, a means to end what was supposed to be a short demonstration, and he was hardly to blame for said fail-safe being nabbed.

"...it wouldn't have been a problem for anybody if I didn't steal your potion."

"Jesse, you _saved_ the world. That's not something to take lightly, not when leaving it to somebody else would've been easier and safer for you. My safest course of action was not making a monster. Instead, I tore what remained of my best friends apart, killed one of them, and let her die in Soren's arms." Ivor glances over his shoulder, briefly, and Jesse doesn't wonder what he's trying to see past the pile.

Magnus and Gabriel have been diligent in their help, and she appreciates that too, but there are a number of less than pleased people among them. The two of them tend, more often than not, to set up camp further from the heart of wherever they set up for the night.

Gabriel's armor gleams decently in the moonlight, and she can see it glinting from here.

Ivor clears his throat in what may be a huff, and he's watching her now.

"It'll be a miracle if they ever speak to me again. Magnus might eventually run out of steam, but Gabriel's always had a very strong sense of justice."

...that's an interesting way to describe an old friend who betrayed him, pushed Ivor away and ignored him as if he were a stranger, someone who lived the life of a respected hero and lied to the world for years even before Jesse's spawning.

"Not enough to keep him from lying."

"If I know him half as well as I once did, it's been eating at him every moment since." Ivor’s legs shift, one straightening before bending to allow him to rest his elbow on its knee, and he's smiling weakly as he turns his head to look at her. There's a warmth, a tired, mournful sort, in his gaze, hidden as it is by the long bangs gripped in one hand, barely kept from shifting in front of his face. "I'm not going to try and make you forgive them or see them in a kinder light. You inherited our mess, our lies and schemes, and fixed it far better than we ever tried to."

"It doesn't feel that way." Disheveled as Ivor seems right now, he still has more control, visibly, than Jesse even halfway feels. "You all seem so experienced, and even my friends seem to know what to do, how to do it. They're great at helping people, and I'm so scared of making things worse, Ivor. What do they need me for?"

"Jesse." The stern tone is back, gentler but not without an edge. She gets the feeling he's had enough of the circular pity cycle they've been going through. "...ultimately, even in the most pessimistic and cruel of lights, it’s obvious they need you as their leader. They need you as a friend, as someone to lean on and to catch them before they fall. They all trust each other, and you, to make sure no one else gets hurt. And truly, you've done so much already for all of us that you seem the most experienced for guiding, for making the tough decisions no one wants to."

"Great." Jesse's tone, in turn, is as quiet as it ought to be this late, but it's not without its own backbone. "But I'm not. I don't know anything about helping or leading this many people. I don't know how to tell them things will be okay when they saw their homes, their towns and cities, everything they've ever known, get ripped to bedrock."

"It's not a situation most people are prepared for." Ivor's boot shifts, nudging her own. There's another rush of shame, of feeling lesser. How must he feel, seeing her parade day after day in his dead best friend's armor? "You've done remarkably well all the same."

"I-"

"Well, save for your poor sleep schedule. You're worried about your friends counting on you? Maybe make sure you're awake, healthy, and ready for when they do, rather than falling asleep on your feet."

"Hey, I've been doing well." Ivor raises an eyebrow as he lifts the mug from her hands, raising an eyebrow, and Jesse's nodding before she's even trying to figure out when she drank all the coffee in it. Her throat doesn't feel like it's in any pain, but it's about as numb as the rest of her.

Ivor, apparently, wonders the same for slightly different reasons.

"You have. I'm amazed you haven't burned yourself with your coffee yet." He pours himself a full cup, and, hypocrite that he is, downs it in one swift movement without wincing. Jesse'd be impressed if she weren't busy pouting. "At this rate, though, you're going to fall over dead or start slipping up at dangerous moments. Do us all a favor and catch a little shuteye."

"...you too." She nudges his foot back before pulling herself to her feet, limbs feeling as stretched and stiff as her armor. "We're not going to get very far very quickly without some amazing potions."

His grin is as sly as her own, his voice with a different, more sarcastic edge.

"Ah, of course. I can assure you you'll have them." There's one last pause as she dusts herself off, and his voice is gentle once again. "And I'll try and rest, Jesse. You should really do the same."

...she will.

If only for her friends, she will.


End file.
